Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) during the recent five-day break encompassing the Labour Day holiday on May 1, was approximately MOP600 million (US$75 million) a day, suggested brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein, and JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in respective Monday notes.
The period, referred to by some analysts as ‘May Golden Week’, although that term is not used by the Macau authorities, was “surprisingly golden” in GGR terms, said JP Morgan.
The city’s estimated GGR for the early-May break has been “well above” market expectation, the institution’s analysts DS Kim, Derek Choi, and Livy Lyu remarked in their Monday memo.
Business for Genting Singapore Ltd, the promoter of the Resorts World Sentosa casino complex (pictured in a file photo) in Singapore, is likely to be “one of the better tourism recovery stories due to its balance sheet strength and good control of Covid-19 in Singapore,” said a Sunday note from banking group Nomura, following the casino firm’s first-quarter earnings.
The firm had reported a net profit of SGD34.5 million (US$25.9 million) for the first quarter of 2021, down 73.7 percent from the previous quarter, according to a filing with the Singapore Exchange on Friday.
Nomura said it had anticipated there would be “not much further upside from domestic tourists” for Genting Singapore’s business, given the continued absence of meaningful numbers of foreign tourists, but that the extent of the decline in quarterly earnings had been “larger than we expected”.
May 5, 2021
In Macau and local casino operator SJM Holdings Limited has reportedly announced that it expects to ‘soft launch’ its new Grand Lisboa Palace property before the end of June in advance of conducting a full third-quarter premiere.
According to a report from Inside Asian Gaming, the Hong Kong-listed firm began work on the $5 billion Cotai Strip development in February of 2014 and hopes that the finished facility will provide stern competition to a host of nearby rivals including the $3.2 billion Studio City Macau venue from Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited. The source detailed that the gambling-friendly Grand Lisboa Palace is set to debut offering around 300 hotel rooms before this complement is later expanded via the opening of a pair of in-house boutique hotels to 1,892.
Macau casino operator SJM Holdings Ltd expects to get up to 200 new-to-market live gaming tables for the opening of its HKD39-billion (US$5-billion) Grand Lisboa Palace gaming resort (pictured) on Cotai, a property the firm wants to open before the end of the first half.
That is according to a Tuesday note from brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd, citing commentary from the casino group’s management following its first-quarter earnings filed that day with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
“SJM has not yet had a table allocation” from the city’s government for Grand Lisboa Palace, stated Sanford Bernstein. It added the casino group expected a new-table allocation from the Macau government “similar to other recent Cotai property openings (150 to 200 tables)”.
Casino operator Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd posted a net loss of US$232.9 million for the three months to March 31, an improvement on the US$364.0-million loss recorded a year earlier. The result was however worse than the US$199.7-million loss reported in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a Wednesday filing to Nasdaq.
Melco Resorts run gaming operations in Macau; in Manila, in the Philippines; and in the Republic of Cyprus.
The company’s total operating revenues for the period between January and March were US$518.9 million, down slightly from the US$528.0-million revenue achieved in the fourth quarter 2020. Such revenue was down 36.0 percent from US$811.2 million in the prior-year period.